Happy Fifth Anniversary to My Love.

Eight years ago, I met this guy for a lunch date – we had met on Yahoo Personals (Gasp! I KNOW, right?!). Turns out he knew of me from a pet portrait I had delivered to a coworker of his two years earlier and actually emailed me about painting his dog.

After the lunch date, we ended up deciding to just be friends. (The reasons for this are widely disputed between us to this day.) After a year of hanging out as friends, we both began turning down dates to just hang out with each other. Without realizing it, we had fallen totally and completely in love with each other.

We married two years after dating. We took the children with us and eloped on Tybee Island as the sun came up.

This man, my best friend, my partner in crime, my straight man, my love, looked at the giant mess I was, learned everything about me, my two children, my hopes and dreams for a career that is not the most lucrative in the world, my complete and utter lack of interest in being a good housekeeper, my PMS mood swings that could possibly get me out of a murder charge, my lack of culinary skills, my love of two giant, sobbery dogs that peed in the house on occasion and ate important objects on many more occasions AND knowing ALL THAT? Still married me. PHEW.

This man is my rock. This man takes care of me. This man takes care of our children as if they were his own – without hesitation or question. This man makes my life so much more than it ever would have been without him in it. Without question, I do not deserve such an incredible man to call my husband, but I thank the stars in the heavens that I get to call him my husband anyway.

Happy 5th Anniversary, Kevin Schmidt, my love. Eleventy million thank yous for being my partner in this life is still not enough. I love you forever and always.

Here is a video I made from out first anniversary. I was going to make another one, but I was so busy with a child named Cordelia – who popped into my life very suddenly and I have been obsessively talking to, drawing and writing about – that I have not had time to make a new one. Or to clean the house. Or to make dinner. Or do much of anything else. See? He is a SAINT, I tell you.